1 



LATER ROMAN EDUCATION 



IN 



AUSONIUS, CAPELLA AND THE 
THEODOSIAN CODE 



COLE 





Class L/ . I 

Book '-- \ 

Gopyiight}^^ 



COPyRlGHT DEPOSIT. 



^r 



LATER ROMAN EDUCATION 



IN 



AUSONIUS, CAPELLA AND THE 
THEODOSIAN CODE 



WITH TRANSLATIONS AND COMMENTARY 



BY 



PERCIVAL R. COLE, Ph. D. (Columbia) 

INSTRUCTOR IN THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION, TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO EDUCATION, No. 27 



PUBLISHED BY 

JTrarlirra (CoUrgp, Cttnlumbta llniwraltg 

NEW YORK 
1909 



-a 7 



Copyright, 1909, by Pkecival Richard Cole 




Pass a OF 
Bbandow PaiNTiNa Compant 

AL8ANT, N. X. 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

Introduction -------5 

AusoNius - - - -- - - -7 

Martianus Capella -.._-- i^ 

The Theodosian Code -- - - - - -29 

Roman Culture and the Roman Curriculum - - - 32 



INTRODUCTION 

It is the misfortune of those who are interested in history 
in general, and in the history of education in particular, that 
many of the most interesting and important documents which 
we have inherited from the past are inaccessible except in the 
ancient languages. In these few pages, therefore, I have made 
accessible in English for the first time some of the more typical 
and important passages in Ausonius, Capella, and the Theodosian 
Code, which relate to education. To these translations I have 
added such brief explanations and biographical notices as seemed 
to be desirable. Although myself wholly responsible for the 
translations, I am indebted to Professor Gonzalez Lodge and 
Professor Paul Monroe of Teachers College for their valued 
assistance and advice. 

P. R. C. 



AUSONIUS 



We should know nothing of the life of Ausonius were it not 
for his own poems, but these are in fact so studiously auto- 
biographical that each of them celebrates, or takes the oppor- 
tunity to introduce in an apparently casual manner, some event 
of his life; it may be his studies, his professorship, his tutorship 
of the youthful Caesar, his colleagues in the Gallic universities, 
or his consulate. We learn that his father, Julius Ausonius, 
was an eminent physician of Bordeaux, one who had little or 
no political ambition, no greed of wealth, attending the poor 
gratuitously, and pleased to guide his life by the example of 
the seven Sages of Greece. Julius Ausonius was probably a 
pagan, and even the Christianity of the son was only skin-deep, 
never coloring his thought or diminishing his allusions to the 
pagan mythology, but only affording a pretext for a few per- 
functory verses upon Easter. 

D, Magnus Ausonius was born at Bordeaux about the year 
309, and was educated in the city of his birth, and afterwards 
at Toulouse, under the auspices of his uncle the rhetorician 
Arborius. His studies were principally after the manner of the 
time, in Latin and Greek grammar, rhetoric and law. After 
essaying the practice of law Ausonius turned to the art of 
teaching, and accepted a chair of grammar at Bordeaux, in 
which he was eminently successful, finally becoming a rhetorician, 
and the most conspicuous teacher in Gaul. His fame reached 
the ears of Valentinian, who called him to the imperial court, 
entrusted him with the education of his young son Gratian, then 
a lad of eight years, and thus permitted him to compare himself 
with other tutors of princes, including the great Seneca, Pronto 
and Lactantius. It was perhaps at this time that Ausonius first 
professed himself a Christian, and the shallowness of his pro- 
fession accorded perfectly with that of the emperor himself. 

7 



8 Later Roman Education 

The good fortune of Ausonius gave a new impulse to his muse, 
and won him the friendship, besides, of such notables as Sym- 
machus and Probus. 

Gratian had barely emerged from the age of tutelage, when 
he succeeded in 375 to the government of the empire, and soon 
bestirred himself to reward his teacher. Ausonius became pre- 
fect of Africa and Italy, and afterwards of Gaul; and the sum 
of his honors was completed by the gift of the consulship for 
the year 379. But the downfall of his protector was near, and 
with the fall of Gratian Ausonius retired from court to the nest 
of his old age in Aquitaine, notwithstanding that apparently the 
favor of Theodosius also would have been extended towards him. 
Here he superintended the education of his grandson, wrote 
elegies to his parents and the professors of Bordeaux, and poems 
inspired by well-worn remnants of the ancient mythology; and 
here he may have died about the year 394. He lived in an age 
when true poetry was impossible; but his verses have delicacy 
and ingenuity, and traces of an original grace and love of natural 
beauty; and incidentally, they will be found to reflect a little 
light on the methods and character of contemporary Roman 
education. 

n 

In the first place, this tutor of royalty, this university pro- 
fessor of the fourth century, has bequeathed to posterity the 
following exhortation to his grandson on the studies of child- 
hood (Idyll IV): 

" Even the Muses have their sports. Mingled with their 
labours, my dear grandson, are periods of leisure. The imperi- 
ous voice of the stem master does not always drive his pupils; 
but fixed hours preserve the alternations of recreation and study. 
It is enough for the boy with memory to have read with a 
will, then let him rest. The school is called by a Greek name,^ 
to indicate that due leisure should be accorded to the laborious 
Muses. Since you are sure that play will come in its turn, 
learn gladly ; for we give intervals to wipe out protracted fatigue. 
The zeal of a boy is wearied unless joyous holidays relieve his 



' The original meaning being leisure. 



Ausonins 9 

days of severe work. Learn gladly, my grandson, and do not 
curse the bridle of a severe master. The aspect of a master 
is never terrible. Let him be gloomy and old, harsh of voice 
and always threatening with his furrowed brow, yet he will 
never be formidable to the pupil who has once become accus- 
tomed to his appearance. A child will love the wrinkles of 
his nurse, and avoid his mother. Grandsons prefer grandsires 
and trembling grandmothers, to whom the late-born are a new 
care, to their fathers. Chiron of Thessaly, who was half horse, 
did not terrify Achilles, son of Peleus; nor did the son of 
Amphitryon dread pine-bearing Atlas ; but both these preceptors 
by gentleness and kindly speech conciliated the affections of their 
young pupils. 

Thyself then do not tremble, though the school resound with 
many a blow, and thine old master wear a truculent countenance. 
Fear is a mark of degenerate spirits ; but do thou stand firm 
■and fearless; let not the cries, the sounding blows, and the 
fear of punishment, agitate thee from the morning hour, because 
he brandishes the ferrule his sceptre, because he is well furnished 
with rods, because he has treacherously trimmed his whip with 
a leather thong, and the benches hum with trembling groans. 
Forget the reputation of the place, and the scene of idle fears. 

Already, following these counsels, your father and mother 
liave assured the calm and happiness of my old age. You also, 
the first of my grandsons to bear in your childhood the name 
•of your grandsire, to gladden the few days that fate still accords 
to me in my declining years, give me either deeds or at least 
"hopes. Now I behold you as a boy, soon as a youth; and then 
as a man, if fate has so ordained ; but if fate is envious, at the 
least I hope, and my prayers will not be in vain, that you will 
not forget your father's example and my own, that you will 
seek the arduous rewards of the Muses, being eloquent and 
one day entering on the path in which we have preceded you, 
and in which are now walking your father the pro-consul, and 
the prefect your uncle. 

Study all that is worth remembering. I shall recommend each 
author. You are to read thoroughly the composer of the Iliad, 
-and the works of dear Menander. With inflexions and intona- 
tions of the voice put measure into the measures, and use correct 



10 Later Roman Education 

accentuation. Mark the moods as you read ; discrimination adds 
to the impression, and pauses give vigor to weak passages. 
When will these gifts gladden my old age? When will you 
renew for me so many forgotten poems, and histories linked 
from age to age, and the socks and robes of kings,^ and melic 
and lyric measures? When will you make young again the 
enervated senses of an old man? While you go before me, 
my grandson, I can learn a second time the modulated poems 
of Flaccus, and lofty-sounding Virgil. You also, O Terence, 
who adorn with chosen speech the Latin tongue, and tread the 
stage with tightly drawn sock,^ conduct my worn-out memory 
to dialogues almost new to it. And now I read your crime, O 
Catiline, and the insurrection of Lepidus, and anon leaving 
Lepidus and Catulus I now read the story of affairs and life 
at Rome during twelve years ; I read the war half-foreign, half- 
civil, which the exiled Sertorius waged in company with his 
Iberian allies. 

And this advice I do not give as an ignorant grandsire, but 
as one experienced in teaching a thousand minds. I myself 
have nourished many in their suckling years, cherishing them 
in my bosom, and teaching them to speak ; I have plucked their 
tender years from their fond nurses. Then I have attracted 
them as boys by gentle admonition and a moderate fear to seek 
pleasure through difficulty, and to pluck the sweet fruits of a 
bitter root. And as they become men under the impulse of the 
age of puberty, I have guided them towards morality, the fine 
arts and the force of eloquence, although they declined to give 
obedience to the yoke, or to offer their mouth for the insertion 
of the bit. A difficult moderation, a hard experience, a rare 
success to be expected only after long trial, a gentle censure 
to rule intractable youth — I had much to bear until my sorrow 
became a pleasure, and my labour was softened by habit and 
use; and then I was called to the pious task of educating a 
prince,* and was invested with various honours, and had the 
right to command in golden palaces. May Nemesis pardon me^ 
and Fortune tolerate my jests ! I presided over the empire. 



' i. e. tragedy and comedy. 
' i. e. finished comedy. 
•• Gratian. 



Ausonius il 

when Augustus was still a boy and though he had the purple, 
the sceptre and the throne, submitted to the commands of his 
teacher, thinking my honours greater than his own. Reaching 
maturity he increased these honours by a sublime addition, when 
I was created quaestor by the two emperors, father and son, 
and was endowed with a double prefecture, a curule chair, a 
robe of state,^ and a painted toga as the reward of my labours, 
and finally became consul, and my name was placed first on the 
calendar in my year.® Thus I have tried to win as great an 
honour as possible for my grandson, and my life will be the 
torch to lighten yours. Although you are already distinguished 
by your father's name, which may well be an honour and 
responsibility to you, yet a marked honour comes from me also; 
but let it not be a burden to you, rather aspire to win to the 
heights by your own efforts, and if you become consul, owe the 
fasces to yourself." 

Ill 

Gaul was the home of Ausonius, and in his day the home of 
learning. In his own words, Gaul had his love, Rome his 
worship. Among the poet's works there is a series of com- 
memorations of the professors of Bordeaux, his birthplace, of 
which the first, perhaps, will serve as a sufficiently good example, 
as it is not least characteristic of the academic standards and 
interests of the day. This then is an elegy addressed to Tiberius 
Victor Minervius, orator. 

" My first speech is of you, Minervius, O pride of Bordeaux, 
second Quintilian of the rhetorical toga. Your teaching for- 
merly shed lustre on Constantinople and Rome, and latterly on 
your native land, not that it can compare with the majesty of 
those cities, but I prefer its name, because it is my native land. 
Let Calagurris'' boast its native Fabius; yet the chair of Bor- 
deaux is not inferior. It has given to the forum a thousand 
youths ; it has added two thousand to the numbers of the senate, 
to the numbers of the purple toga, myself included; but I shall 



' tr abeam. 

* i. e. the name Ausonius was written before that of his colleague in 
indicating the year. 

' Calahorra, the birthplace of Quintilian. 



12 Later Roman Education 

\ 
not speak of the numerous wearers of the purple toga, but 
will sing of you for your own sake, not for the honor that I 
owe to you. If you are compared with the panegyrists, you 
should be numbered among the panathenaics ; if you care to 
develop the fictitious controversies of the schools, Quintilian has 
but a disputed palm. You have a flow of words like a torrent, 
yet one which rolls down gold and not a flood of mire; and 
the talent which Demosthenes thrice called the first thing in an 
orator^ is so potent in you that he himself is surpassed by you. 
Shall I refer also to that divine gift of nature, your memory? 
You would hold fast in your mind anything you had once heard 
or read, so that people could rely upon your ear as upon a 
book. Once I saw you enumerate all the throws of the game® 
after a long contest, all the dice that were poured forth in 
rapid rotation by the steps cut out in the hollow boxtree, nar- 
rating with exactness all the points played or recalled in that 
prolonged period. No malice ever darkened your soul, your 
tongue was witty and spicy,^^ but gentle and without bitterness. 
Your table was distinguished in a way not culpable according 
to the censorial regulations, such as Frugi Piso would not have 
disowned as his. Sometimes on your birthday or on festal 
occasions it displayed abundance., but never such as to impair 
your moderate fortune. Though dying heirless at sixty years, 
you are mourned by us as a father and a friend. And now, 
if there is aught of us left after our last fate, you still live 
mindful of the life which has perished; but if nothing is left, 
if the long rest of death have no sensations, you have lived 
unto yourself, and our consolation is your fame." 

In the estimation of Ausonius, and of men of culture in his 
day, the title of Grammaticus was extremely honorable. Under 
these circumstances it was not unnatural that the attempts of 
pseudo-grammarians to claim the name were regarded with 
jealous disfavor. Ausonius looked upon such impostors in the 
same way as a modern university graduate regards the man 
who has purchased his degree, not earned it. It must have been 
in this spirit that his epigram to Philomusus the grammarian 



»i. e. action. Cf. Quintilian, Book XI, Ch. 3; Cicero de Oratore 
Book III, section 56. 
' Omnes bolos. 
" sale multo. 



Ausonins 13 

was written : " Because your library is stuffed with books that 
you have bought, do you think yourself a savant and a gram- 
marian, O Philomusus? According to this reasoning, you have 
only to provide cords, bows and instruments, and to-morrow will 
see you a musician."" It was not that the grammarian was a 
lucky fellow, that men should imitate him so. " The fortunate 
man is not a grammarian ; he never was so, and no grammarian 
was ever described as fortunate. But if in spite of fate, there 
was ever a fortunate grammarian, he must have passed beyond 
the canons of grammar."^^ The grammarian of course taught 
Virgil's epic, high among his courses of lectures ; and this is the 
cry of the unhappy husband, grammarian though he be : " Though 
I teach arms and the man, and know arms and the man well, 
I have married arms rather than a wife."^^ 

From a social point of view, upon the whole, to be a gram- 
maticus was no slight distinction; it was to be a university 
professor of recognized academic status; and many a candidate 
for such a position must have lived and died a sub-doctor or 
assistant professor, a mere proscholus. Accordingly Ausonius 
writes of such an assistant professor, Victorius, a man apparently 
addicted to antiquarian researches, in these not uninteresting 
words which follow. (We know little or nothing of the Castor 
and Rhodope of the text, whose books, though apparently still 
in existence at the time, were already rare.) 

" Studious Victorius, gifted with memory and facility, an 
assiduous reader of unknown books, perusing only what is recon- 
dite, you care more for studying papers eaten by bookworms 
and mice than for those that are more familiar. The pontifical 
law, the treaties and origin, before the time of Numa, of Cures 
the city of sacrifices ; what Castor says of all the little known 
kings ; what Rhodope published of her husband's writings ; our 
pontifical law ; the decrees of the ancient Quirites ; those of the 
senate ; the laws of Draco and Solon ; those which Zaleucus gave 
to the Locrians ; those of Minos under Jupiter ; those of Themis 
before Jupiter; are better known to you than the books of our 
Cicero and Virgil, and the facts of the history of Latium. Per- 



il Epigram XLIV. 
" Epigram CXXXVI. 
" Epigram CXXXVII. 



14 Later Roman Education 

haps further reading would have given you these also, if Lachesis 
had not accelerated your last journey. You had but the bare 
libation of the name of grammaticus, the mere varnish of the 
honor of our chair. You died finally on the distant coasts of 
Rome, whither you had crossed from the Sicilian shore. But 
now rejoice, if this pious tribute reaches your Manes, for you 
are remembered in the company of celebrated masters." 

The labors of an educated Roman included a good deal more, 
in one respect at least, than the work of a modern scholar. He 
was at his wits' end to get copies of books, and again, his friends 
would request copies of such as he had, and would expect to 
have them, not infrequently, within an unreasonably short period 
of time. Ausonius, poor man, had to write to the pretorian pre- 
fect Probus: "O most worthy Probus, the copyists have caused 
me delay, and I know that I have kept you waiting so long 
that you will not thank me for the fulfilment of my promise. 
Fortunately, however, I have not failed you. I have sent your 
nobility the 'Apologues ' of Titian and the 'Chronicles ' of 
Nepos, which are a sort of apologies too, since they are very 
like fables, and I am glad, nay proud, that my efforts to serve 
you will contribute something to the education of your children." 
The slaves who were unfortunate enough to be employed as 
copyists were probably driven early and late, so that, some- 
times, they would run away, although the work of a clerk must 
have been preferable in many ways to that of a laborer in the 
field. Ausonius has some epigrams on one of these fellows, 
named Pergamus. "As lazy a writer as you are a slow run- 
ner, Pergamus, you have fled only to be taken in the first couple 
of hundred yards. So, Pergamus, you bear the marks of writing 
on your face, and your forehead carries the letters neglected 
by your hand." This was indeed a cruel jest, for the wretched 
copyist had evidently been branded with a hot iron. But the 
epigrammatic Ausonius goes on to remark that an injustice had 
been perpetrated, the innocent forehead suffering for the hands, 
guilty of idleness, and the feet, of running away. 

Far more pleasant is it to turn to some verses of apprecia- 
tion written to a really excellent clerk, who was evidently a 
stenographer, as indeed it appears from many references that 
shorthand writing was practised by the Roman scribes, long 



Ausonius 1$ 

before the time of Ausonius." " Slave, skilful minister of swift 
notes, come hither. Open the double page of thy tablets, where 
a great number of words, each expressed by different points, 
is written like a single word. I go through great volumes; and 
like dense hail the words are hurled from my noisy lips, but 
thine ears are not troubled, nor is thy page filled. Thy hand, 
scarcely moving, flies over the surface of the wax, but if my 
speech runs into a long circumlocution, you put the ideas on the 
tablets as if I had already spoken them. I wish my mind had 
as swift a flight as your right hand when you anticipate my 
words. Who, pray, has betrayed me? Who has told you what 
I was just meditating about saying? How does your winged 
right hand steal the secrets of my inmost thoughts ? What is this 
order of things so new that what the tongue has not yet uttered 
has come to your ears ? Schooling has not taught you this ; no 
other hand is so skilled at swift abbreviation. Nature and God 
have bestowed this gift upon you, to know beforehand what I 
am going to say and to anticipate my desires."^' 



"See especially Manilius, Astronom. Bk. IV, V. 197. 
» Epigram CXLVI. 



MARTIANUS CAPELLA 
I 

There are some men of whom we should care to know little, 
if the intrinsic merit of their work were the only thing concerned, 
but of whom we cannot know enough, because of the influence 
that they have exerted upon the subsequent course of human 
affairs. Such a one is Martianus Minneius Felix Capella, the 
author, it is said, of the most successful textbook ever written, 
of whom if we conclude that he was an advocate, resided at 
Carthage, and wrote between 410 and 429 A. D., we have deter- 
mined not less but rather more than is known by positive 
evidence. As to when he wrote, there is indeed the greatest diver- 
sity of opinion, but it appears to have been while Carthage 
flourished and had proconsuls, and if so, before 429, when 
Genseric landed in Africa and led his host of Vandals to the 
capture of the city (439). Capella appears on the other hand 
to have alluded to the capture of Rome by Alaric in 410, but 
the interpretation of this passage is at the least doubtful. One 
can only conclude with certainty, that since he used the works 
of Aquila Romanus and Aristides Quintilianus, Martianus must 
have written subsequent to the third century, and probably sub- 
sequent to Augustine's book on the liberal arts, published in 387. 

In the pages of any other author, writing at the beginning of 
the fifth century, it would have been strange to find no mention 
of Christianity, but it is not strange in Martianus. Prolix and 
self-satisfied, he seems to have cared less for the historical 
events that were going on about him than even the Christian 
writers of those times ; and indeed, although the Roman Empire, 
as we have been accustomed to consider it, was toppling to 
ruins all about him, it is a fact that neither he nor other writers 
of the time appear to have grasped or appreciated the mighty 
phenomenon. His only care is to amuse himself and his read- 
ers with neo-Platonic mythology and allegory; and facts and 
16 



'^*^ ■ ' Martianus Capella 17 

events have little interest for him except as symbols. The 
empirical details which he was compelled to include in his work 
upon the several liberal arts were too tiresome to occupy much, 
of his personal attention, and it was fortunate, perhaps, for 
succeeding generations, that Capella preferred to cull them- 
directly from Varro as to grammar, dialectic, geometry and 
astronomy, from Aquila Romanus upon rhetoric, from Solinus. 
and Pliny on geometry and geography, and from Aristides 
Quintilianus on music. 

The " Marriage of Philology and Mercury " is the title of the 
extant work of Martianus, but the true occasion of this strange: 
ceremony, one reluctantly admits, is no more than the compila- 
tion of a textbook. The author appears to have drawn his per- 
sonal satisfaction from the composition of the allegorical setting' 
of the books on the arts, wherein he is pedantically allegorical' 
and obscurely humorous; while the actual subject matter, as- 
has been suggested, was compiled from older Latin sources. But 
most of the writers of the fourth century dearly loved to mingle 
sterile facts with fantastic allegories; therefore if Martianus 
amused himself in this way, it was but natural. And conse- 
quently, why not take his facts from the nearest older text- 
book? For in those days of dogmatic temper, and a scarcity 
of books, it was barely possible to question tlie veracity of the 
written word. Seldom indeed did the verdict of experience 
presume to compete with the sanctity of a written authority. 
This attitude of the later Romans has been attributed to the 
influence of the Christian doctrine; on the contrary, however, 
it was characteristically both Greek and Roman, from the time 
when Theophrastus succeeded Aristotle in the government of 
the Lyceum, and inherited his master'jJx)oks, Martianus, then, 
troubled no more to investigate his facts than frequently does 
the writer of a modem textbook for schools. Moreover, he 
made many mistakes, which may have been due to either haste 
or ignorance. But, when all is said, he could not go far astray 
with the formalism of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, as long 
as he copied the words of his originals carefully on the paper. 

There is something ungrateful about discussing an author 
whom you cannot praise, something paradoxical about trans- 
lating him at all, if there is no good in him. For why not be- 



i8 Later Roman Education 

patient until someone arises to treat his work appreciatively? 
On the other hand, in the case of Martianus these arguments 
are not conclusive, for what is intrinsically trivial becomes his- 
torically of the greatest importance, and the " Marriage of 
Philology and Mercury " continued to be the principal fountain 
of the learning of the schools of western Europe during several 
centuries. And again, if one should wait for another to appre- 
ciate Martianus, before translating him, it is very probable that 
his work may never come into English at all. He is not wholly 
uninteresting, even to the modern reader, for his allegory is 
strange enough to attract attention, and in his accounts of the 
liberal arts one is brought face to face with an odd mixture of 
the curious and the familiar. 

To expect originality of Martianus is as unfair as it is futile. 
There was no originality either in himself or his times. The 
fact is, perhaps, that apart from science, which was foreign to 
the spirit of the day, there was nothing new for the unfortunate 
Romans of the decadence to think about, except theological 
dogma. For, with that exception, the earlier Greek philosophers 
had exhausted all the speculative questions of the natural and 
supernatural worlds. Indeed, as I imagine, one of the reasons, 
though doubtless a minor one, that the scholars of the middle 
ages gave over philosophy for theology, was that theology repre- 
sented a more virgin wood, not yet denuded of its attractive 
foliage. Thus, had Martianus been a theologian, he might easily 
have diversified his argument by a more powerful motive than 
allegory. For example, he might have exercised his imagination, 
like Augustine, by speculations on the probable scheme of eternal 
punishment or the nature of the happiness of the blessed ; or 
again he might have proceeded with a series of easy refutations 
of heresies, or the elaboration of a diversity of picturesque 
phrases of invective. This would have been in the spirit of 
the contemporary Christian literature, which had in its favor 
emotion if not reason, strength if not mercy. For, far as the 
precepts of the later Latin fathers were removed from those 
of the original gospels, they infused into the Christian literature 
a simplicity, naturalness and vigor that the work of a pagan 
writer of the fourth century, such as Martianus Capella, could 
not possibly have reproduced. Martianus had only his allegory 



Martianus Capella 19 

to sustain the interest of his readers, and his own, and even in the 
allegory he merely succeeded in ringing the changes on the ideas 
and the mythology of earlier and greater masters. Thus, on the 
whole, Martianus achieved the obscurity of symbolism without 
its beauty, and just as the form of his occasional verse is more 
or less disfigured by errors, so the allegorical movement of the 
whole work is impaired by numerous lapses into the crudest 
improprieties of literary expression. 

In reading the book of Martianus an almost absolute distinc- 
tion ought to be drawn between the character of the setting, 
which was mainly his own, and that of the material for study, 
which was incorporated, not without error, from other sources. 
As the first two books are given to the setting alone, and are 
entirely allegorical, these are more original than the others, but 
in so far as one may speak of their originality at all, it consists 
only in giving new forms and combinations to other people's 
facts and ideas. Apparently Martianus had at first intended 
to limit his allegory to the first two books, as in the verse at 
the end of the second book he affirms the termination of the 
myth; but immediately the child of his imagination claims his 
sympathy once more, and regulates the tone and form of the 
work until the very end, where music, as is proper, conducts the 
bride to the nuptial couch. Meantime apart from the setting, 
the seven later books have been sufficiently well described, I do 
not know where, as " strictly instructive, and sapless as the 
rods of mediaeval schoolmasters," for by their side the scholas- 
ticism of the later middle ages, much abused as it has been, 
would almost appear to a reader to be fresh, humane and 
beautiful. 

II 

An Analysis of the Marriage of Philology and Mercury^ 

There is no doubt that Martianus was not a Christian; his 
work consequently does not enter into the limits of our study; 
none the less I wish to devote a few Hues to him, because of 
the considerable influence which he has exercised upon not only 



'Translated from Ebert. 



20 Later Roman Education 

the scientific but even the aesthetic culture of the middle ages. 
Above all, it is his allegories that have contributed towards this 
result, as it is these also which throw a sort of veil over the 
paganism of the author. In the middle ages, his work was for 
a long time one of the principal bases, and often even the only 
basis of the education of the schools. Composed of nine books, 
it is written in the form of the Menippean satire ; but prose 
occupies a larger place in it. The first two books are entirely 
devoted to myth and allegory; and here, in brief, is the story 
which the author relates to his son. Mercury wishes to marry. 
After having sighed in vain for Sophie, Mantice and Psyche 
who refuse him, he is advised by Virtue to address himself to 
Apollo, who proposes to him Philology, the most learned 
daughter of the family of the ancients, a friend of Parnassus, 
and one who knows the mysteries of the lower world as well 
as the will of Jupiter, the depths of ocean as well as the kingdom 
of the stars ; in a word, she is encyclopedic knowledge. Mercury 
accepts the proposition, and Virtue is delighted by it. All three 
then, accompanied by the Muses and amidst the music of the 
spheres, wend their way through the skies and penetrate into 
the palace of Jupiter, whom they find with his spouse. Apollo 
explains to him the wishes of Mercury. Jupiter raises a diffi- 
culty about agreeing, and Pallas proposes to assemble in council 
" the gods already married and the goddesses venerable in their 
age " {et dearum grandaevas) , and to submit this matter to their 
decision. The author here draws a picture of this assembly 
of the gods, among whom are found on an equal footing several 
purely allegorical characters from later Roman mythology, such 
as Valitudo, Verisfructus and Celeritas, while Discordia and 
Seditio are refused admission. On the proposal of Jupiter, the 
assembly decides in favor of Mercury ; but it is necessary that 
his bride should be raised to the rank of the gods ; this privilege 
will be moreover henceforth granted to mortals who shall have 
done noble deeds. Philosophy has to announce to the world 
the decision of the supreme senate, a decision which is engraven 
on tables of brass. 

Such is the ground-work of the first book. In the second, 
we see the appearance of the bride, who manifests fears on 
the subject of her union with a god, in spite of the great love 



Martianus Capella 2i 

which she has for him ; but after a long calculation, she recog- 
nizes, by the numbers which form her name and that of her 
betrothed, that this marriage is very suitable for her. Her 
mother Phronesis prepares her dress for the ceremony, and 
binds her own girdle about her. The Muses sing in her honor; 
and four venerable women, the four cardinal Virtues, come 
and salute her. The three Graces approach in their turn, one 
kisses her on the forehead, another on the mouth, and the third 
on the breast, in order to give grace to her looks, her tongue 
and her heart (animus). Athanasia, the daughter of Apotheosis, 
afterwards appears to accompany Philology in the heavens. But 
she has first, by command of Athanasia, to get rid of a burden 
which inordinately enlarges her breast. She resigns herself, 
though with regret, to surrender a great quantity of books, 
which are gathered up by young maidens, themselves aided by 
the Muses Urania and Calliope. After having drained the cup 
of immortality which Apotheosis presents to her, the bride 
ascends to heaven on a sedan chair. She first meets Juno 
Pronuba, to whom she makes a sacrifice and addresses a prayer. 
Juno now assumes her guidance and introduces her to a knowl- 
edge of the celestial regions and their inhabitants. After having 
made the circuit of the stars, the bride finally comes to the 
milky way where the palace of Jupiter is found. Seated in the 
midst of the gods, he awaits the bridal pair. Then Mercury 
appears, and is given a seat near Pallas ; then comes in her 
turn the bride, who modestly takes her place beside the Muses. 
Her mother at length demands the reading of the Poppaean law 
and the production of the wedding presents of the bride. Then 
Phoebus rises to introduce particularly the maidens who are in 
his brother's service and who actually form a part of the wed- 
ding gifts. These are the seven liberal arts; they appear, in 
due turn, in the seven following books of the work, each of 
which is devoted to one of the arts ; their order is exactly that 
which they later occupy in the trivium and quadrivium: i, 
Grammar; 2, Dialectic; 3, Rhetoric; 4, Geometry; 5, Arithmetic; 
6, Astronomy; and 7, Harmony (that is to say Music). 

After having given in each case a description of the whole 
exterior, that is to say of the physiognomy of expression, clothes 
and instruments, the author traces a symbolic and allegoric pic- 



22 Later Roman Education 

• 

ture of the particular art; Mercury's young maidens then them- 
selves expound a summary idea of their science, in chapter form 
and in a style exceedingly dry. Here the author proceeds in 
a completely arbitrary way ; sometimes he is sparing of details, 
sometimes he lavishes them ; sometimes he omits whole branches 
of these arts. However, he preserves throughout the work the 
limits of his tale; not only does the public, composed of the 
gods, call upon the Arts to begin to speak, but even invites 
them to silence; also one finds some of these celestial hearers 
amusing themselves by making remarks after the lesson, and 
expressing in more or less lively terms the ennui that they have 
experienced ; in short, each tries to get in a quip. Because of 
the lateness of the hour, Medicine and Architecture are refused 
a hearing. The night has almost come, when music comes forth 
last to give a discourse ; as soon as she has finished, she accom- 
panies the bride to the nuptial chamber, singing a lullaby. It 
only remains finally for the author to take leave of his readers 
in some verses. Such is the structure of this work, which, by 
its arrangement, gave such pleasure to the middle ages, and in 
which the most bizarre imagination was allied with the most 
arid intellect. 

Ill 

An Extract from Book IV, on Dialectic^ 

Binding her propositions in intricate knots, she without whom 
there is neither sequence nor opposition in argumentation, coming 
into the assembly of the gods, brings forward the fundamental 
principles of speech and lays the foundation of the propositions 
of the schools, calling to mind that an expression consists of 
ambiguous words, and that nothing is normal, unless it is asso- 
ciated. But although pale Aristotle speaking in ten categories 
impetuously change his moods, although the Stoic sophisms cir- 
cumvent and mock the senses, although they bear the never lost 
horns on the forehead.^ although Chrysippus accumulate and con- 
sume his own sorites, and although Cameades wield equal power 



' Ed. Kopp, Frankfort-on-Main, 1836, pp. 325-341. Cf. Teubner text. 
' Referring to the ancient sophism : ' ' What you have not lost you 
have; you have not lost horns, therefore you have horns." 



Martianus Capella 23 

with the aid of hellebore,* yet no such dignity has ever fallen 
to the children of men, nor has such a happy lot befallen thee : 
for now, Dialectica, thou mayst speak in the temples of the 
gods, and practise the laws of thy teaching in the sight of Jove.* 
Thereupon entered at the call of Apollo a woman rather pale, 
but very keen of sight and with vibrant eyes continually in 
motion. Her locks were curly, with becoming waves, and had 
the appearance of being crimped and bound, yet they were let 
down in certain regular steps and encircled the whole form of 
the head so that they seemed to be neither too scant nor too 
abundant. She wore indeed the cloak and garment of Athens, 
but she carried something in her hands that was strange and 
quite untried in any gymnasium. For in her left hand a serpent 
was coiled in monstrous folds ; inside her right certain formulae 
skilfully devised on flowering tablets, charmingly variegated, 
were held beneath by the curve of a hidden hook. But since 
she hid the insidious reptiles under her cloak in her left hand, 
she offered her right to everybody. Thus if any one took any 
of these formulae, he was soon seized by the hook and drawn 
to the venomous folds of the hidden snake, which quickly 
emerging first wounded him with eager bites by the venomed 
point of his piercing tooth, and then surrounded him with a 
number of folds and constrained him to the conditions offered 
to him ; but if anyone did not wish to accept any of the formulae, 
she either caught them with certain contrary questions or quietly 
stimulated the snake to creep against them, until the binding 
folds strangled their captives according to the will of the ques- 
tioner. But the woman herself was slight of figure, and dusky 
in her dress,^ but her hair was like brier-thorns and she spoke 
somewhat that is unintelligible to the vulgar. For she asserted 
that the universal is dedicative to the particular, but in trans- 
verse opposition to the abdicative, and that both can be con- 
verted, by connecting equivocals with univocals,^ and she declared 



' Carneades the academician when about to write a polemic against 
the books of the Stoic Zeno is said to have used hellebore as a purgative, 
so that no crass humors in the stomach might distract his mind or dimin- 
ish its powers. 

* Thus far the metrical invocation. A prose description follows. 

* Probably signifying the obscurity of the art. 

* This sample of technical logical jargon is evidently chosen with the 
deliberate intent to create a formidable impression. 



24 Later Roman Education 

that she alone could discern the true and the false as though 
by a kind of gift of divination. She said that she had been 
educated on the rock of Egypt, and then had descended to the 
school of Parmenides and Greece, and by proposing to speak 
on either side of a question had arrogated to herself the great- 
ness of a Socrates and a Plato. Why then, said Bacchus, the 
most jocular of the gods and one who did not know Dialectica 
very well, since the twin snake of Mercury rising on his staff 
attempted to lick her, versed as she was in argumentation and 
boasting in her victories over many, with frequent and rapid 
flashes of his tongue, and then also the Tritonian Gorgon hissed 
with the joy of recognition, doubtless she has either been brought 
here from the sands of gasping Libya, as her twisted hair and 
friendship for snakes testify, or else we must credit her with 
being a poison-monger of the Marsic nation. For in viprous 
caressing recognition she is loved with the adulation of snakes, 
or if not, she is caught by the trick of the hook yonder, because 
that most seductive circlet is also an inhabitant of the Marsic 
territories. When most of the gods had laughed at this as 
much as was proper,^ Pallas a little annoyed forbade the ridicule 
of the newcomer, suggesting that this sober personage (a thing 
that could not be said of some of the gods®) could be derided 
by none when once she had brought forward her propositions, 
even among kinsfolk that may be expected to be critical. And 
then Pallas ordered Dialectica to tell what she had related in 
the trial of venomed assertion and bitterness, and to put herself 
in readiness to instil her wisdom. Then when Grammar, who 
having got through her discussion was standing near, feared to 
take the circled coils and gaping mouths of the slippery snake, 
they were entrusted to the goddess herself, who had tamed even 
the Medusa's hair, with their seductive figures and hooked 
formulae. Then by the dressing of her hair she was proven to 
be genuinely Athenian and Attic, especially as the wearers of 
the pallium and the choice of the Athenian youth follow her, 
wondering at the wisdom and mental power she displays. But 
Jupiter, who thought that the superficiality of the Greeks was 

^Compare Plato, Republic 3, Laws 5; and Aristotle, Nichomachean 
Ethics 4, 8, 10, for the classical view of the indecency of immoderate 
laughter. 

* Alluding to Bacchus. ^_ 



Martianns Capella 25 

inferior to the Roman strength, not only when it came to the 
practise but even the judgment of virtues, commanded her to 
express her knowledge in the Latin tongue. Then Dialectica, 
although she thought that she could not do herself justice in 
Latin, with ready confidence, her aspect rendered formidable 
even before she spoke by the vibrant tension of her eye, thus 
began : 

Were I not assisted by the learning and industry of Varro, 
a man famous among the glories of Rome, as a woman of the 
Greek nation I might be found very unskilled or barbarous 
upon an examination of my way of speaking Latin. For after 
the golden stream of Plato and the genius of Aristotle the work 
of Marcus Terentius (Varro) was the first to entice me into 
speaking Latin, and to make it possible to speak in the Ausonian* 
schools. Striving therefore to be consistent with these principles, 
I shall not refuse to speak in Latin. And first I wish it under- 
stood that the Romans, wearers of the toga, could not have yet 
prepared a new vocabulary for my purposes, and therefore it 
is quite justifiable if I use the terminology for the science of 
dialectic that I am accustomed to in Athens, however the other 
arts express themselves. For, as nobody doubts, neither Gram- 
mar, whom your ears have heard, nor she who is renowned 
for the gift of the fertile mouth,^" nor she who outlines the 
diversity of forms with a stick in the dust,^^ could be explained 
without my ratiocinations. For within my power and sway 
are six principles that are fundamental to the other arts. The 
first is speech,^^ the second interpretation,^^ the third proposi- 
tions," the fourth the sum of propositions,^^ the fifth judgment, 
concerned with the criticism of the poets and their songs, the 
sixth as to what it is suitable for rhetoricians to say. Now in 
the first part the questions must be asked, what is genus, what 
form, difference, accident, property, definition, the whole, the 
part, the mode of division, the mode of partition, the equivocal 
the univocal, and so to speak the plurivocal. Indeed you ought 

• i. e. Latin. 

" Rhetoric. 

" Geometry. (Compare the occupation of Archimedes in Livy 35, 31.) 

" de loquendo. 

*^ de elognendo (de inter pretatione) . 

" de proloquendo. 

" i. e. the syllogism. 



26 Later Roman Education 

to bear with these unusual terms, since you have compelled a 
Greek to speak Latin. Thus the first part of our division will 
consider what words are literal, what metaphorical, and in how 
many ways they may be metaphorical, what are substance, 
quality, quantity, relativity, place, time, situation, character,^' 
doing, suffering, opposites, and how many kinds of opposition 
there may be. But in the second, concerning interpretation, we 
shall ask what is a noun, a verb, the two in conjunction, which 
of them is the substantive and which the predicative part of 
the sentence, how far the noun is accepted, how far the verb, 
how far the sentence is perfect, so as to be a proposition. The 
third part, on propositions, follows this. In it the investigation 
is made, as far as time allows, as to how propositions differ in 
quantity and quality, what is a universal, a particular, an 
indefinite proposition, what are affirmative and negative proposi- 
tions, what force have particulars, and how do they affect each 
other. ■ Then follows the fourth part, which as we have said 
deals with the sum of propositions. In it the questions are 
asked, what is an assumption, an inference, a syllogism, a con- 
clusion ; what is a predicative syllogism, what a conditional, and 
what is the difference between them ; how many forms are of the 
predicative kind, and what are they; do they follow a certain 
order, and if so, what is its nature; how many moods has each 
and have these moods a certain sequence, and if so what is its 
nature; finally what are the primary and necessary moods of 
the conditional syllogism, what is their order, and how do they 
differ from each other. I think that this is enough for our 
present theme and thesis. I shall first indicate what genus is, 
going back to the beginning in order to run over the whole field. 
Genus is the comprehension of many forms under a single 
name, as aniittal, whose forms are man or horse or the like. 
But sometimes certain forms comprehended under a genus are 
such that they themselves may be in the relation of genus to 
other forms, as the genus man, which is a form to animal, but 
a genus to barbarians and Romans. And one may go on divid- 
ing the forms of a genus in this way until one comes to an 
individual thing. For if you divide man into male and female, 
male into young and old, young into those who can and those 

" Habitus, any state of acquired perfection. 



Martianus Capella 27 

who cannot speak, and if then you divide the young into 
Ganymede or any other youth of a known character, then he 
is not a genus, because we have now come to an individual. 
But we ought to use whatever genus is nearest to the business 
in hand, so that if the question is about man, we ought to 
assume his genus to be animal, because that is the most relevant. 

By forms we mean the same as what we call species. Forms 
therefore are such that when substituted for the genus they 
retain its essence and name, as man, horse, lion ; for since these 
are forms of animal, both man, horse and lion can be called 
animal, and their name and substance participate in the essence 
that is ascribed by definition to the genus. 

Difference is a discrimination adequate for the purpose in 
hand, as if it be asked what is the difference between man and 
horse, it is sufficient to say that man is a biped and the horse a 
quadruped. But we ought to notice that since there are many 
differences in individual things, anything may be differentiated 
in as many different ways as we can find differences. For if 
we wished to divide animal, we can do so as to sexes, since 
some are male and others female; as to age because some are 
infantile, others youthful, others old ; as to size because some 
are small, others large, others middling; as to modes of locomo- 
tion because some walk, others creep, swim or fly ; as to diversity 
of habitation because some are aquatic while others are dwellers 
on the earth or in the air, and some say even in the fire; or 
we can divide them by their utterance, since some talk, others 
groan, bark or yell. Yet we should see that each division is 
perfect and that everything is included in the particulars. For 
male animals may be new-born, small, walking, terrestrial, bipeds 
and talkers all at once. Therefore you may use what differentia- 
tion you please, but it ought to be suited to the purpose in 
hand. Thus if you are to speak in praise of mankind, it is 
advisable to divide animals into rational and irrational, so that 
it may be readily seen how high among the animals has nature 
set men, to whom alone she has granted powers of reasoning 
adapted to self-knowledge. 

Accident is what does not occur except in a certain species, 
yet does not always occur even in that species, as rhetoric only 



28 Later Roman Education 

belongs to man, but need not belong to him, since anyone may 
be a man without being an orator. 

Property is what occurs, and occurs invariably in the same 
species, so as to distinguish anything from what is common to 
all things, as laughter in man. For neither can anyone but a 
man laugh, nor can a man avoid laughing according to his 
nature even if he should so wish. Difference is distinguished 
from property in that difference distinguishes anything only 
from the subject under discussion, whereas property distinguishes 
it from everything else. For if we wished to discriminate man 
from lion as to violence, by the fact that a lion is ferocious and 
a man gentle, we only discriminate as to what concerns the 
business in hand. For in calling the lion fierce and man mild 
we do not separate man from other gentle animals, nor the lion 
from other beasts, but when we have called man a laughing 
animal we have discriminated him thereby from the generality 
of other living creatures. 

Definition is the clear and brief explication of the inner mean- 
ing of anything. In defining, three things are to be avoided, 
the false, the greater and the less. The false is in this wise: 
man is an immortal or an irrational animal. For though it be 
true that man is an animal, it is false that he is immortal or 
irrational. The greater is this wise : man is a mortal animal. 
For although this is concise, it is too extensive, because it 
applies to all animals. The less is indicated in this form: man 
is a grammatical animal. For though no animal except man 
is grammatical, yet not every man is a grammarian. The perfect 
definition is this : man is a rational and mortal animal. For by 
adding mortal we have separated him from the gods, and by 
adding rational, from the beasts. 



IMPERIAL EDICTS 

WITH REGARD TO PROFESSORS, GRAMMARIANS, 
DOCTORS, AND STUDENTS^ 



The Emperor Constantine Augustus to Volusianus 

We ordain that doctors, grammarians and other professors of 
letters, and the goods which they possess in their cities, shall 
be exempt from taxation and shall have the honors due to their 
functions. We forbid their citation to court, or the infliction 
of any injury upon them. If anyone harasses them, he shall 
pay one hundred thousand nummi to the treasury, exacted by 
the magistrates or the quinquennials, or else they themselves 
shall be subject to this penalty. If a slave has done them injury, 
he shall be beaten with rods by his master in the presence of 
the injured party; but if the master shall have consented to the 
injury, he shall pay twenty thousand pieces to the treasury, and 
the slave shall be retained as a pledge until this sum is paid. 
We order that their goods and salaries shall be duly paid. And 
since like parents, masters and tutors they ought not to be loaded 
with onerous offices, we permit them to fulfil public offices if 
they are willing; but we do not compel them to do so contrary 
to their inclination. Given on the Kalends of August, at 
Sirmium, in the consulate of Crispus and Constantinus, Caesars 
(ist August, 321 A. D.). 

II 

The Emperor Constantine Augustus to the People 

In confirmation of the benefits of our divine predecessors, we 
ordain that doctors and professors of letters, with their wives 



•Translated from Cod. Theodos. Book XIII. tit. 3, li. i, 3 and 10; 
Book XIV, tit. 9, H. I. Cf. Appendix, CEuvres Completes d'Ausone, 
tome II., seconde serie de la bibliotheque latine-frangaise, v. 5. 

29 



30 Later Roman Education 

and children, shall be exempt from every public function and 
from all public charges. They shall not be forced into military 
duty, they shall not have people billeted upon them, nor dis- 
charge any function of a public character; in order that they 
may the more readily instruct many students in liberal studies 
and in the arts to which we have referred. Given the fifth day 
of the Kalends of October, at Constantinople, in the consulate 
of Dalmatius and of Zenophilus (27th September, 333 A. D.). 



Ill 

The Emperors Valentine, Valens and Gratian, Augusti, 
TO Principius, Praefect of the City 

Let all men know that immunity is granted to the doctors 
and the professors of the city of Rome, so that even their wives 
may rest exempt from all disquietude; they shall be free from all 
public charges, they shall not be forced into military service, and 
soldiers shall not be billeted upon them. Given the third day 
of the Kalends of May, in the third consulate of Valentinian and 
Valens, Augusti (29th April, 370 A. D.). 



IV 

The Emperors Valentinian, Valens and Gratian, Augusti, 
TO Olybrius, Praefect of the City 

(Note: Sunt etiam Musis sua ludicra — even the Muses have 
their relaxations — says Ausonius, Idyll 4. The discipline of the 
schools was severe, yet students were frequently given to diver- 
sions such as are restricted by the law which follows (Cod. 
Theod. Book XIV, t.9, l.i), which was passed while Ausonius 
himself was at court, so that it is not impossible that the hand 
of the famous professor may itself be traced in its provisions. 
This law indicates some interesting phases of student life and 
manners.) 

All those who come to the city in the pursuit of learning 
should present to the master of the Census in the first place 
a letter from the provincial judges whose function it is to give 



The Theodosian Code 31 

them permission to come. The letter will mention the towns, 
the birth and the merits of the individuals concerned. There- 
upon, on their first entrance, they shall declare to what studies 
in particular they propose to devote their attention. In the 
third place, the office of the Censuales shall carefully take 
note of their residences, to ensure that they direct their endeavors 
towards the end which they have claimed to pursue. The Cen- 
suales shall also see that each of them behaves in conferences 
as men should who would avoid a shameful and dishonorable 
reputation, and associations which we regard as bordering upon 
crime; and that they should not go too often to the spectacles, 
nor frequent untimely banquets. Nay rather, if any one has 
not conducted himself in the city in such a way as the dignity 
of liberal studies demands, we give power that he be publicly 
beaten with rods, and be at once placed on shipboard and 
expelled from the city and return to his home. But to those 
who carefully devote their attention to their studies, permission 
is given to remain at Rome until the twentieth year of their age ; 
but, after this time, he who shall have neglected to withdraw 
voluntarily shall be sent back to his country by the care of the 
prefect even though his education be unfinished.^ But for fear 
that these measures should be taken in a perfunctory way, your 
high Sincerity is to instruct the Office of Censuales to take 
a note every month of the names of the students, whence they 
come, and which ones ought to be sent back to Africa or to 
other provinces because of the time of their sojourn, those only 
beinof excepted who are attached to the offices of corporations. 
Similar notes will be addressed every year to the archives of 
our Mansuetudo, in order that we may be able to know the 
merits and aptitudes of each, and judge how and when they 
will be serviceable to us. Given the fourth of the Ides of 
March, at Treves, in the third consulate of Valentinian and 
Valens, Augusti (12th March, 370 A. D.). 

* Conjecturing imperitus for impurius. 



POSTSCRIPT 

ROMAN CULTURE AND THE ROMAN CURRICULUM 

If Rome inherited the civilization of Greece, it was not because 
the Roman mind was constituted Hke the Hellenic, but rather 
from the force of those circumstances which established her 
power throughout the Mediterranean coasts. For among the 
Romans there was little evidence of a natural versatility of 
interest, little power to elevate facts into ideals, or to construct 
new worlds of imagination, little disposition even to wander into 
untrodden paths of thought. They looked often to the practical 
side of life and seldom to the theoretical; their prose was the 
expression of legal formulae or the practical eloquence of the 
forum, their very poetry, until the period of so many transla- 
tions from the Greek, no more than a form of worship. 

In the field of drama, the Romans had a native form of 
comedy, but were indebted to the Greeks for the beginnings 
of tragedy. The original types of Roman comedy included the 
Fescenninae practised at rustic festivals and harvestings, the 
Saturae performed by rural clowns with music, dancing or ges- 
ticulation, and the Mimi or mountebank representations, scurril- 
ous yet sententious, which held a subordinate place in literature 
from the period of the fall of the Republic to the final stage 
of imperial culture. Types of comic characters were developed 
in the Atellanae, plays of a burlesque sort, often performed as 
afterpieces. There was no material for the education of the 
young in the indigenous Roman comedy, which was not only 
licentious in the extreme, but written always in an undignified 
plebeian strain. 

Roman comedy of the more pretentious kind was an imitation 
of Greek originals and applied itself to Greek subjects. From 
Livius Andronicus to Terence, it appears to have gained in 
refinement of expression rather than originality of idea. The ■ 

32 



Roman Culture and the Roman Curriculum 33 

plays of Terence were favored by literary students of the empire, 
and in general the palliata or comedies from the Greek were 
studied in academic circles to the exclusion of the coarser but 
more national togata which dealt with Roman situations and 
characters of a more realistic, but a baser type. 

Tragedy was not indigenous to Rome, but an exotic flower 
of Greece. At best the tragic poets were few and their genius 
of a secondary character. Seneca, for example, was read rather 
than acted ; but his tragedies furnished a part of the subject- 
matter of literary studies under the later empire. 

Epic poetry began to be used in the Roman schools under the 
Republic, with the Latinized version of the " Odyssey " by 
Andronicus. Naevius followed with a poem on the Punic war, 
and Ennius with an epic version of the Roman Annals. Even 
Cicero and Octavianus attempted the epic, while the imperial 
period produced Lucan's " Pharsalia," together with a host of 
courtly and antiquarian epics which tended to express ingenuity 
and scholarship rather than patriotism or feeling. Epics of the 
heroic rather than the historical type were usually written on 
Greek subjects which necessitated pedantry, imitativeness and 
a labored recourse to foreign mythology. These limitations were 
surmounted with great success by Vergil, whose "^neid " became 
the standard text of grammarians, its sonorous lines being recited 
everywhere in the schools. In the meantime numerous Christian 
epics were written ; but, naturally enough, they found no place 
in the schools as centres of pagan learning. 

Certain poems, however, of a purely didactic though seldom 
of a religious character, were written expressly for the use of 
students. Some of the poems of Ausonius, such as those on 
the calendar, belong evidently to this class, while there were also 
treatises in verse upon letters, prosody, rhetoric and other sub- 
jects which might be schematized and committed to memory. 
Such verses were written by the grammarians of the later 
empire exactly in the spirit and mode which was afterwards to 
become common among the more enterprising mediaeval school- 
masters. The so-called Disticha Catonis, probably written pre- 
vious to the period of the official adoption of the Christian relig- 
ion, comprised a collection of moral sayings arranged in couplets 
for the use of schools and actually retained their vogue to the 



34 Later Roman Education 

end of the middle ages. But it is probable that greater attention 
was bestowed upon the form of poetry than its content. Scholars 
were practised in the use of various metres, and in the composi- 
tion of imaginary epistles both in verse and prose. Towards 
the close of the empire considerable attention began to be paid 
to fables, riddles, acrostics and similar trifles ; and hexameters 
began to be embellished with rhyme. 

While lyric poetry was less congenial to the Roman disposi- 
tion than narrative, it is clear that epigrams became extremely 
fashionable, while elegies were written and studied in schools 
as exercises in style. The mastery over poetic form appears 
to have increased in proportion to the diminution of inspiration 
and power. 

Prose occupied a subordinate place in the curriculum of 
Roman education, as it had done with the Greeks. It had a 
rhetorical character, partly owing to the practical use that was 
attached to the command of prose; and partly, perhaps, from 
the influence of Cicero, who first made it worthy of study in 
the schools. Prose was employed in history, but as long as 
this study flourished more in the interests of rhetoric than fact, 
history meant little for education, although the annalists pre- 
served many facts and traditions that were more often embodied 
or summarized from their several predecessors than dictated by 
their own experience or observation. 

Antiquarian learning was not without its devotees, and 
Ausonius depicts for us the type of a research student who 
knew more about recondite studies than the history and litera- 
ture of Latium. The most learned of the Romans was M. 
Varro, the greater part of whose work has perished. From the 
period of Varro, which was also that of Cicero, an academic and 
erudite class was rapidly developed which took possession of 
the schools at the same time that it sacrificed the ancient con- 
nection of theory with the practical affairs of life. Learning 
became the monopoly of the gramntatici, who gave themselves 
largely to etymology, grammar and the making of dictionaries. 
The textbooks of Latin grammar by Donatus in the fourth cen- 
tury, and Priscian early in the sixth, retained their celebrity 
throughout the middle ages. The grammatici were critics as 
well as grammarians, so that as Suetonius says their business 



Roman Culture and the Romcm Curriculum 35 

was the emendation of texts, the discrimination of meanings, 
and the compilation of critical notes. They did Httle, however, 
beyond the imitation of the Greeks. Each new work on gram- 
mar embodied copious extracts from its predecessors, usually 
without acknowledgment, until there finally arose an incredible 
confusion of authorities. Meanwhile the granimatici taught not 
only etymology and grammar but also mythology in their schools. 
The mythology was borrowed from Greece; but the etymology 
might have either a Greek or a Latin basis according to the 
grammatical school to which the teacher happened to adher«- 
Oratory, more than any other study, occupied the attention 
of the talented Roman youth. In politics, jurisprudence or war, 
oratorical skill was equally indispensable. A manual of oratory 
is ascribed to the elder Cato. In the words of Livy, some were 
carried forward to the highest offices by jurisprudence, others 
by eloquence, others by military glory.^ Oratory then was 
recognized in the Republic and earlier Empire as a high road 
to advancement and fame. Cicero regretted that whereas for 
the Greeks it had been an end in itself, for the Romans it was 
but a means to success at the bar.^ The youths trained in ora- 
torical schools would begin to speak in the forum at eighteen 
or nineteen years of age, at times making their debut in a 
funeral oration. From the time of the elder Cato it became 
customary for speakers to write down and publish their orations 
which had previously been delivered without notes. The 
speeches of Cicero, Quintilian and others were taken down by 
clerks, probably in shorthand, and published with or without the 
consent of the author, sometimes in garbled versions. Under 
these conditions the study of rhetoric in Rome was anything 
but the perfunctory occupation that it seems to be at the present 
time. It was a practical and profitable thing, frowned upon by 
the old-fashioned Censors (who decreed the expulsion of the 
rhetors from Rome in 92 B. C), but welcomed by the ambitious 
youth. One reads that only four years after the decree above 
cited a freedman of Pompey, one Vultacilius Plotus, skilled 
in Latin rhetoric, had opened a school in the city. There were 



' Livy, 39, 40. 

' Cicero, de Oratore, 2,55. 



36 Later Roman Education 

also numerous teachers of Greek and Asiatic oratory in Rome 
during and subsequent to the age of Cicero. 

Under the Empire oratory became less genuine and more 
servile. Forced to renounce serious topics, the schools became 
the centre of a host of fictions. The ancients had been orators, 
the moderns were but rhetoricians ; at least, such was the judg- 
ment of Tacitus. The Empire was never so sure of main- 
taining a check upon freedom of speech as after it had begun 
to pay the salaries of eminent professors of rhetoric, the first 
being Quintilian himself in the reign of Vespasian. Gaul and 
Africa in the third century became important centres of rhetor- 
ical study, Gaul being signalized by the skill of her professors 
in the manipulation of forms of style ; Africa by the energy of 
her rhetors, including Tertullian, Arnobius, Cyprian and Augus- 
tine, in the defence of Christianity. 

When a pupil had completed his task under the grammaticus 
he went naturally to the school of the rhetor, where his work 
began with demonstrations, and proceeded to declamations, de- 
liberations and controversies. Controversies included case law, 
the subdivision of the subject, and the appeal to mitigating cir- 
cumstances. But the cases cited in the schools were strangely 
unreal. Pliny, Petronius, Tacitus and others ridicule the ques- 
tions that were accustomed to be raised and disputed, dealing 
with tyrants, or pirates, or the sacrifice of maidens. Contem- 
porary politics were practically tabooed. It was the opinion of 
^Petronius that such instruction made youths into fools. Little 
realism was attached even to historical debates about Sulla and 
Hannibal ; none at all to declamations on subjects taken from 
Vergil, Ovid, or Homer. But the same stereotyped empty 
fictions continued to be treated in the time of Ausonius, the 
same in the days of Augustine, the same even as late as the 
sixth century. The subjects appointed for prose composition 
were no more vital than topics of debate. In particular, among 
the favorite exercises of the schools was the composition of 
fictitious letters ; for example, an advanced pupil would be called 
upon to write a letter from Cicero to Caesar, or from Seneca 
to the Apostle Paul. 

Fairy tales, romances and love stories were licentious and 
unsuitable for declamation in the schools, but as they had been 



Roman Culture and the Roman Curriculum 37 

suggested even in Homer, and by the time of Ovid had come 
to furnish a part of the staple material of literature, they were 
actually employed in education to an extent difficult to deter- 
mine, but certainly appreciable. The romances were at first of 
the nature of Greek translations, and were generally called 
" Milesia." The Metamorphoses of Apuleius were to become the 
prototype of a certain kind of mediaeval romance. It was 
alleged that the schools of the later empire were addicted more 
to fiction of this kind than to the books of Plato. At least it 
appears to have been the policy of the emperors to encourage 
the study of trifles in order to divert attention and criticism 
from the field of politics. 

While the bent of the Roman mind was distinctly more prac- 
tical than theoretical, and accordingly not so much addicted to 
philosophy as law, it could not escape from the influence of 
Greek speculation upon the constitution of the universe and the 
nature and destiny of man. It was unfortunate that the contact 
of Rome with Greece was altogether subsequent to the fiery 
creative epoch of Greek thought. It was but an afterglow of 
Greek philosophy that warmed the stubborn intellects of the 
Romans to attempt ambitious flights. Epicureanism, Stoicism, 
the Peripatetic philosophy, the New Academy, Neo-Platonism, 
and a degenerate form of the Pythagorean philosophy became 
domiciled in Rome, but were looked upon with suspicion and 
regarded as exercises rather than paths to objective truth. The 
bare shoulder and cloak of the professional philosopher were 
often the marks of a mere charlatan. Philosophers were actually 
banished from Rome by Vespasian and Domitian, but at other 
times they conducted their informal schools without molestation, 
and even with honor, so that one philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. 
came to occupy the throne. In the earlier imperial period 
Epicureanism, in the later Stoicism, was the most popular form 
of philosophical creed. The study of philosophy revived in the 
fourth, fifth and sixth centuries because of the fact that the 
pagans were driven to its tenets in order to maintain them- 
selves against the Christian propaganda. A last desperate 
attempt to preserve the ancient philosophy was made not with- 
out success in the sixth century by Boethius. His partial trans- 
lation of Aristotle into Latin and his book on the "Consolations 



38 Later Roman Education 

of Philosophy " were studied in the early mediaeval schools. 
The opinion of Gellius as to professional philosophical teachers 
was that they would run and sit at the gates of wealthy youths 
and persuade them to waste the whole night in drinking wine, 
ostensibly as a vehicle, no doubt, for discussions and dialectic. 
The opinion of the average Roman was certainly that philosophy 
was irreligious, a waste of time, and a veil for mercenary 
motives. 

Totally different was the Roman estimation of Law. From 
the earliest times the Romans had a natural genius for law and 
order, a shrewd practical intelligence, and a disposition to dispute 
any conceivable infringement on their individual or collective 
rights. It is declared among the Roman traditions that there 
were schools for reading and writing in the forum from the 
earliest days of the Republic ; and whether this be an exaggera- 
tion or not, the origin of the custom of teaching the laws of 
the twelve tables to the children is lost in the same obscurity 
with the origin of these elementary schools. Collections of the 
sources of law were made as early as 204 B. C, and by degrees 
the habit of collecting decisions in typical cases developed a new 
field for study alongside the examination of the laws themselves. 
For law the Romans were by no means primarily indebted to 
Greece, and it has been remarked that the more national a 
Roman poet may be, the more prominent the position the law 
holds in his writings.^ The schools of oratory were obliged to 
devote considerable attention to the study of jurisprudence, but 
the relative emphasis upon good oratory or good law appears 
to have varied according to the legal knowledge or conscientious- 
ness of the teacher. A consulting lawyer learned his business 
by accompanying a distinguished jurisconsult and listening to his 
opinions. Cicero's opinion of the jurisprudence of his day is 
sometimes respectful but here and there contemptuous. It was 
not under the Republic, however, but under the later empire 
that Roman law attained its majority and became the chosen 
field of the ablest and most honorable minds. Gaius became 
the first professor of civil law, and began to write his " Institu- 
tions " by way of an introduction to the subject. His most 
notable successor was Ulpian. The codification of the laws 



* History of Roman Literature. Teuffel and Schwabe, I, p. 78. 



Roman Culture and the Roman Curriculum 39 

ensured their place once for all as a subject of study in the 
universities of the later Imperial period. Masters of law and 
students of law are mentioned in inscriptions, the latter with 
frequency. 

For the purposes of this introduction, other subjects of study 
in the Roman schools require no more than a cursory reference. 
Arithmetic was taught in the schools, as is indicated by Horace, 
but we know little of what was done in the subject in his day, 
although there are .some indications that the decimal system of 
notation may have been known much earlier than has been 
supposed. No advance was made upon the knowledge formerly 
possessed by the Greeks in arithmetic and geometry, which suf- 
fered in the estimation of scholars by their supposed alliance 
with astrology. The Romans were by no means the equals of 
the Alexandrian Greeks in mathematical attainments. Neither 
did they study natural history at first hand, but only from Greek 
texts, which were gradually corrupted and confused by the intro- 
duction of superstitious auguries and credulous allegories and 
fables. 

The study of agriculture flourished among the Romans, but 
in a private and individual way, and by means of books rather 
than schools. Medicine was a purely Greek art, although under 
the later Empire the Arabic physicians had already begun to 
dispute the palm with the Greeks ; this art also depended upon 
books and individual instruction but not schools. The same gen- 
eral status is characteristic of architecture and military science. 
Geography, music and astronomy were actually taught in school, 
but only in the first of these subjects did the Romans show any 
originality or tendency to add to the sum of human knowledge. 
The measurement of land, however, was so important from a 
legal and military point of view that special schools of surveying 
were established under the Empire, the first impulse having 
been given by Caesar, who summoned Greek teachers in this field 
from Alexandria to Rome.* 



* For a convenient summary of the principal references in extant 
Roman literature to these studies consult Teuffel, History of Roman 
Literature, ed. London, 1900, pp. 1-97. I have drawn largely from 
the work of Teuffel in this postscript. 



